Darken his Eyes with thy Tresses
by Petronia
Summary: Bardorba's first visit to Lea Monde, forty years before the events of the game, and Sydney's early childhood. Incomplete.


**Darken His Eyes With Thy Tresses**

**I.**

The young man arrives in Leá Monde by sea, having boarded a three-masted merchant barque in Cordova for the week-long journey across Bastogne Bay. It is the final destination for which he planned at the beginning of a long voyage, and the one nearest home. Accordingly he is on deck early, long before land is sighted. It is mid-morning when the ship rounds the verdant tip of Pointe Melus, and the sun nearly dissolves his first view of the city in light, roofs and spires broken into a scintillating mosaic above the wine-dark sea.

"Not an hour now," a dour bearded man says, pausing for a moment at his side. He is the second mate of the vessel. The young man acknowledges this information with a courteous nod. Around him the deck has come to life, hands clambering over the stays and hauling on the halyards, bringing in the sheets in accordance with shouted orders. Bear with the land! Hold course! There is a vivid undertone of gladness to the shouts and hails that crowd the air, and even to the offhand curses. The crew is mostly Leámondain, and has been far afield before putting in at Cordova: the _Isolde_ lies low in the waves, her hold crammed and fragrant with cedar lumber of the Valendois Indies, island spice and bolts of plain silk destined for the Bel Comté's steam-stifled dye-shops. And thence gilded and embroidered and cut, streamers rose madder and gold to flutter in a Valnain lady's wake... The young man turns up the collar of his cloak against the salt spray and leans out over the railing, shading his eyes with one hand. Is that glint the sunlight glancing off stucco and marble, or the new copper sheathing a cathedral dome? No, the Cathedral of a surety. And above its façade the white statue of the saint, arms spread to guide the mariners home. Leá Monde, holy birthplace of Iocus, whose winding streets once sursurrated with the echo of miracles.

City of Light. Who would gainsay that name?

The _Isolde_ is at half-sail. The yards and masts creak in the wind as she slows, approaching the city. Sunlight dances on the water. Gulls and petrels wheel above, flecks of white against infinite blue, their cries welcoming. Mind the tiller now! The bosun calls out. See to that buntline! Land! Land!

And the young man allows himself a smile.

An order, and the topgallants lowered; another, and the courses come down with a great sound, main and fore and aft, furling like the white wings of some immense bird as it settles on the waves. They are in the harbour itself now, the sailors throwing out mooring lines to the small boats that are congregating, darting lissome as fish about the ponderous flanks of the sailing ship. The anchor weighs with a dull splash.

A voyage ends. A voyage begins.

The young man is one of the first ashore. He has paid the passage of his crossing beforehand, and slips away unnoticed in the bustle of docking. His luggage consists of a small sea-chest he sends before him to a hostel he knows by recommendation, with a scribbled note and the promise of a generous fee. His hands thus emptied, he sets out on foot.

The harbour is riotous with sound, and filled with the heavy salty reek that landsmen think of as the scent of the sea. The young man, who has travelled far, knows it is not: it is the scent of the places where the land meets the sea. The green growing things of the shore touch the ocean, and wither and rot and dissolve; the sleek cold finny things of the ocean cast upon the shore and do likewise. It is a death-scent, but he finds it energizing and rather pleasant. Amid the incense of decay a city of men has arisen like an unwitnessed resurrection, a long-desired second home.

Through the narrow streets of this city the young man wanders like a questing prince, looking for a sign.

**II.**

In most ways he seemed an ordinary child. Tow-blond, pale-skinned, grey-eyed. Small for his age, with (the women said) the same bones as his mother. Ironically, then, he had the look of a Bardorba where his father did not. Whatever ancient latency in the blood had surfaced to touch the locks of a younger son with ebony and his eyes with dark fire lay dormant once more, its work done. One could almost have believed the curse lifted. If one were a fool.

Such a one Bardorba was not.

Mireille had – as far as he could tell – retained no conscious memories of the birth. Once she was well enough to speak, however, she refused the child as if it were not hers. The matter rated barely a whisper with the servants. It was common enough with first births among noblewomen, too-young married and knowing nothing of pain. Bardorba was informed but thought no more of it, nor for that matter of her. A wet nurse was found, and the child (being delicate of constitution from the outset) was sent to live with her in a tenant village. In Bardorba's mind, the bulk of Mireille's travails as a mother was over. Remained the duties of her public position, and in that capacity at least he found her survival convenient.

They removed to Valnain, only returning to the Greylands between parliamentary sessions. The boy grew from visit to infrequent visit, but remained as affectionate as a commoner child, at least with his father.

Even the first shadows that fell seemed most cursory.

"It's only an old trinket, m'lord," the nurse said in answer. "A cheap agate that used to belong to my own granddam. He wears it every day, no matter how fine his clothes. It's as much as I'm worth to pry it out of his hands for prayers. He'd not do it before his nurse, of course, but I've heard him speak to it, for all as if he was whispering secrets to his mother. He's a good boy and quiet, m'lord, but a child will have fancies."

They watched from a distance as the boy sprinted after the loosed hounds, romping in a rare show of high spirits. It was summer, and the afternoon sun filtered down through the arching branches of the willows, dusting the blond of the child's hair with gold. Bardorba frowned, gazing after his son.

"Do you think he misses his mother?"

"What child wouldn't?" The nurse lowered her eyes hastily, and bobbed a curtsey. "Begging your pardon, m'lord. But if only m'lady could—"

"Say no more," said Bardorba, "I understand." He raised his voice, then, gesturing with his walking stick: "Sydney!" The boy raised his head and halted, the dogs returning to his side and circling about him. He leant against a shaggy grey flank as tall as he was, waiting from them to approach, the posture infinitely and unconsciously graceful. His hair was tousled, his cheeks flushed rosy from the exercise. He looked like a painting, Bardorba thought, a work of art executed by a master hand. And for the first time since that desperate night, something stirred in him: a dangerous movement of the heart.

No trace of this image remained, however, in the portrait he eventually commissioned.

Mireille gave him no trouble. Perhaps she had erased the child from her memory, down to the fact that she had not wanted him; at any rate she seemed pleased enough to rediscover his existence. Contrary to what Bardorba had expected, it was Sydney who kept his distance. He was not shy, but he stood stiff and grave before her, and did not respond to her awkward touch. In the end they sat together long enough only for the fashionable society painter to sketch in their relative positions. It took two hours, and Sydney did not speak a word in that time.

He wore the agate pin at his collar, and refused to let them remove it.

"It is not even properly carved," Bardorba said to him during a later session, this one ungraced by the Duchess's presence. "It looks nothing like your mother. And while I applaud your reluctance faced with the apron string, I would have credited you with enough courage to speak up to her face."

"She is not my mother," Sydney said.

In this way he was never ordinary, even as a child: his voice was singularly beautiful in timbre. It was low for his age, a mellifluous alto that startled the interlocutor and gave a fey adult ring to his words – Bardorba could not remember him ever lisping, or stumbling over unfamiliar terms as children do. Hardly the pure treble so prized by the choirmasters of Valnain, but had he been a beggar and not a ducal heir, the Church would have sent him to the knife rather than risk a loss to the vagaries of change. As it was, he spoke little, and no one had heard him sing.

"You are pert, sir," said Bardorba, annoyed. Sydney merely shook his head – minutely, from side to side.

"She is not my mother," he repeated. "My mother always speaks to me." Bardoba, watching the tall glass on the opposite wall, saw him reach to touch his collar, and smile. It was an odd smile for a child, lashes lowered and lips curved with secrets; he had witnessed it oft a time on a more fitting, more ancient face.

The painter clacked his tongue in automatic reproof. The stroke of his brush never halted, never faltered.

And Bardorba's blood ran cold.

**III.**

He sees her: a fountain in the town centre, where cool water splashes in streams from marble lions' heads, their gaping maws discoloured by lime, into a dark pool. Women swathed in black crouch over their washing basins, their rhythmic movements like those of a flock of feeding birds. The clatter of wood, and water hissing on hot cobblestone. It nears noon, a white noon with no shadows at all.

There are no other passers-by. The city dwellers are readying for siesta, and windows have begun to shutter around the square. The young man draws his sea-cloak about him, as if it could confer shelter from the merciless light, and steps back into the recessed alcove of a doorway. He watches, one hand absently tracing worn lines in the stone. The woman straightens, perhaps sensing his gaze; it weighs on the brown curve of her nape, the light-swallowing billow of her skirt. Her back arches. She rotates her shoulders back, stretching, and stands in an abrupt graceful movement, her skirt falling unevenly to her shins. She is very young, a mere girl. Her brown arms gleam with soap and water in the sun.

One of the other women lifts her head, shading her eyes with one hand, and says something in a cajoling voice. She speaks in dialect, not the Valendois of the capital, but the young man shivers, hearing a word repeated twice, with emphasis. The patois of this region is as old as Leá Monde herself, and he guesses at the meaning of the syllables. On the wall his fingertips run blind over the sign of them: the curve and the downward slash, chiselled into the stone with marks neither sun nor wind could erase. The pause before one of countless incantations interwoven. It could be, _speak;_ it could be, _begin this spell._

The girl smiles. She bends down and lifts the edge of her washing basin, tossing dirty water out onto the cobbles with one easy motion. Then she straightens, and uses a wooden pail to dip from the fountain. As the rinsewater splashes into her basin she lifts her head, dark eyes closing to the noonday sun, and begins to sing.


End file.
